Prince & Prince – Sign O' The Times

According to this interview with Rogers from Tape Op magazine, when she first started working with Prince, "the first thing I was asked to do was pull the old console out of his home studio, install his new API, and fix his tape machine, which, at that time, was the Ampex MM-1200."

Plus, as per Duane Tudahl's Prince and the Purple Rain Era Studio sessions 1983 and 1984 book, "Little Red Corvette" was the first song Prince recorded on the Ampex MM1200 24-track on May 20, 1982.

Prince's Ampex MM1200 was used for the Warehouse sessions in August 1983, which produced "Let's Go Crazy" and "Computer Blue".

Prince used an Ensoniq Mirage on Sign O The Times.

Prince liked to used the Yamaha RX-5 digital drum machine for his 1987 album Sign O' the Times. For example, he used both the Linn LM-1's cabasa, kick and tambourine combined with the Yamaha RX-5's snare to create the drum beat for the album's title song.

In a interview Lisa Coleman said that Oberheim was a big part of Prince’s sound. She later saids Prince was incredibly bold in the way he would just use a preset and then brighten the fuck out of it! He would turn the filter way up so the sound would cut through the mix. I still have the OB-SX from those days. It’s one of the most simple Oberheims - there are just a few knobs on it, but that was the most quintessential keyboard from that era. There’s the organ sound from When You Were Mine or The Beautiful Ones. If you play that organ sound with a delay pedal, there you go! And the horn punches? Play [preset] C1. That’s the sound!”

Prince started to use the Fairlight CMI around 1985 he wrote a song titled Tibet which used a handful of samples from the Fairlight CMI. He used the synth a lot for The Sign ‘O’ The Times Album and continue to use them for a long time. He later had two of them fixed around 1996 according to an interview on http://www.fortheloveofthefairlight.com/tag/prince/

In the Manic Monday Music video you can see Prince bent down messing with his pedal. You can see it on 0.42. There is also a photo of Prince’s pedalboard set up for the Sign ‘O’ The Times Tour and can the pedal on. Here is a link https://prince.org/msg/7/441997 He also seen with a yellow pedal in 1991 at the Special Olympics rehearsal but it’s hard to tell if it’s the SD-1 but more than likely it is here’s a link https://youtu.be/ja_PXE5i26A

Prince played a Sigma SE-19 on the Sign O The Times and Lovesexy tours.

A guitar synth used by Prince on Parade and Sign O The Times.

This is prince using the model c guitar custom made by Jerry Auerswald, Auerswald also made a bass like the model c guitar used by levi seacer jr. Prince used this guitar in the sign of the times era until the nude tours